Crop Forcing

Crop forcing is based on moving the grape-ripening period from hot summer months to a cooler month later in the growing season. This is achieved by making an additional pruning, stopping the natural cycle of the plant and “forcing” it to restart its cycle later.

One of the main obstacles is to decide when to apply the additional pruning. One goal of VISCA is to have enough accurate models to predict plant behavior after this sever summer pruning (based on accurate predictions of meteorological data), which will help to determine the appropriate moment to apply the additional pruning.

In order to develop these models, different field experiments are implemented, like the ones on the photos where it’s possible to observe three different Crop Forcing treatments. These treatments are necessary to analyze vine phenological evolution, and with this data to feed the models.

This technique will be tested in the Spanish and Portuguese demonstration sites.